Suffice to say there’s a lot that’s gone on. But because we’ve only got so much space in the ODT, the quick version is: we the players are Guardians, gun-toting future space wizards, and have been fighting on behalf of — and with powers granted by — the Traveller, a magical orb that represents the Light, in order to prevent humanity’s extinction at the hands of various hostile alien servants of the Darkness. In the course of thwarting various of the Darkness’ god-like nasties and their associated apocalyptic scenarios, we learned over literal years that there may be one Biggest Baddie of Them All behind everything; then that said Biggest Baddie was slowly on the way to our galactic neck of the woods; then that it was called The Witness; then that The Witness planned to use the power of the Traveller to essentially freeze the universe for eternity — The Final Shape — and only we could stop them.
In other words, The Final Shape expansion, where Destiny players finally face The Witness directly, is the big, highest-stakes-possible climax, the Luke-Skywalker-confronts-the-Emperor moment of a decade of continuous live-service game storytelling. It was a lot to live up to, and reported trouble at Destiny studio Bungie, in addition to a 6-month delay of its initial release date, had the game’s faithful more than a bit worried.
But such fears were unfounded. The Final Shape pretty much smashes the big finish out of the park, making not only for a rousing conclusion to this saga for those who have been on the journey every step of the way, but also a pretty great showcase of the game at its best for those who may be curious to jump in now. You might not have the context for everything going on, but The Final Shape’s spectacular level design, tough battles and huge sense of scale are likely to impress regardless.
The expansion’s campaign has players pursuing The Witness into the heart of the Traveller itself, a fantastical paranormal space that not only allows Bungie to demonstrate its knack for spectacular sci-fi / fantasy vistas, but also pay tribute to — and put a new spin on — a variety of memorable locations from the series’ past. Spectacle is everywhere. Waterfalls plunge into a misty abyss, giant faces issue frozen cries from cave walls, upside-down forests grow from the ceiling and splashes of bold primary colour catch the eye from the unnaturally bisected landscapes that are a sign of The Witness’ corruption.
The campaign is a linear trail in pursuit of The Witness, and one incredibly neat effect of this is getting to look up occasionally mid-climb or between firefights to see a landmark you have already traversed in a previous mission now at a remove on the horizon behind you. Get ready to take screenshots.
Applying what they’ve learned over the years, Bungie have thrown a variety of new mission mechanics into these incredible landscapes, freshening things up for veterans and making gameplay more interesting than "just shoot everything until it’s dead". The classic "more things" aspect of an expansion is also well covered, with a handful of new enemy units thrown into the mix (you too will learn to curse the appearance of the flying guys) and the addition of the Prismatic subclass, a sort of Swiss army pocketknife of superpowers that allows players to mix and match abilities from different existing classes together in one suite and concoct whatever crazy combination they like.
Throughout the campaign the story, bolstered by a return (from beyond death!) of fan favourite character Cayde-6 (Nathan Fillion), offers challenges and catharsis for the series’ roster of characters and in The Witness, a smug, implacable supervillain of the sort that you really start longing to fire a rocket launcher into the face of.
This all culminates firstly in one of the most challenging raids (a six-player endgame activity) the game has ever put together for the hardcore, and then, more accessibly, a series-first 12-player mission as the ultimate showdown with The Witness themself, in which you are joined not only by 11 fellow Guardians but a host of your favourite NPC allies to make a final assault that generally plays out as absolute bedlam. As a grand finale to the 10-year Light and Dark saga, it’s hard to imagine something better, short of some kind of $300m Destiny feature film production.
But this, as they say, is not all. Post-campaign there’s still a host of things to keep you busy. The concept of just tooling around on the map looking for trouble, previously limited to doing fairly boring patrol missions, has again been reworked into the Onslaught system. This spawns a variety of mini-battles with different mechanics around each area and keeps a running tally of points as you complete them to rise up three different reward tiers. You can also get goal-oriented with Pathfinder, a new system in which you chain completed objectives together to reach a weekly reward. Or dive into the new challenge areas of lost sectors and "cysts", challenge areas that reward you for new options for your Prismatic subclass.
And then there’s the expansion’s new exotic weapon mission, which for the first time has you pairing up with a fellow Guardian to race against the clock in a series of co-ordinated puzzle solving in between all the shooting. There’s plenty here to keep you blasting away.
The Final Shape then, which threatened to be a bit underwhelming, has instead turned out to be a bit of a triumph. If you’ve ever been a Destiny player at all, you’ll want to jump back in to experience this grand story conclusion, and if you’ve ever been curious as to what people saw in this long-running, kind of cult-y game about space wizards, you might want to jump in and just ... run around. There’s a lot of history you won’t be armed with, but one thing will soon become absolutely clear: that Witness guy definitely needs a rocket launcher to the face.
By Ben Allan
